[fpc-pascal] Porting jcl to fpc on linux : Status and some questions

[Michael Ring]

I've started porting, so far I have ported about 50% of jcl.

Right now I am stuck with a few questions:

fpc 2.1.1 does have better support for WideStrings. Any idea when a 
stable version will be released, because no code needs to be implemented 
for JclWideStrings to work (Next 6 Month, This Year, Next Year)??

Also, it seems to me that Delphi7 compatibility is far better in 2.1.1

Does it make sense to define RTL150_UP in jedi.inc or is it too early?

I've found out that a declaration for popen is missing in Libc. Is it 
missing on purpose? If not, could someone please add the definition 
because I do not think it is a good idea to define the function in jcl's 
sources.

Now for something I really do not understand, but perhaps I am still too 
inexperienced with fpc to find out what is going wrong here:

pthread.inc:
Function InitializeCriticalSection(var lpCriticalSection: 
TRTLCriticalSection): Integer;

JclSysUtils.pas:
...
FCriticalSection: TRTLCriticalSection;
...
constructor TJclIntfCriticalSection.Create;
begin
  inherited Create;
  Libc.InitializeCriticalSection(FCriticalSection);
end;

Now I get the following compile Error:

JclSysUtils.pas(2969,50) Error: Call by var parameters have to match 
exactly: Got "TRTLCriticalSection" expected "pthread_mutex_t"

How can I find out what is going wrong here?

Thanks in advance,

Michael